


Slight of Hand

by theimpossiblegeekygrrl



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Spoilers, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 01:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11071134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theimpossiblegeekygrrl/pseuds/theimpossiblegeekygrrl
Summary: The cringe that comes before she moves away is never so slight.Nor is the dull stab of pain he feels.





	Slight of Hand

On an ordinary day, he may not even visit. 

Eye contact, or any contact at all, is something he attempts to minimize.  Hence the gas, which makes them so perfectly compliant when it’s their time.  There are easier ways to make them submissive for their trials, of course: chemically induced comas, paralysation …

Christ, the list is truly endless. 

* * *

He’s watched her more than any of his subjects thus far. 

There’s something about her, something so startling and terrifyingly different.  She’s fragile.  _Fractured_.  He could sense it when he heard her play in the subway, resonating clearly above the sad notes of the music. 

He’s always been keen to it, even when he still practised traditional medicine.  He can almost taste vulnerability on his tongue like the sweetness of wild honey.

But this one …

* * *

She’s bright, and in more ways than one.  He feels like a moth drawn to her night after night as he watches her sleep on the monitor. 

She talks to herself, even then.

* * *

He doesn’t want to take her from the safety of her cell, but he doesn’t want her to wither away.  When he sees her face in the sun, her blue eyes filling with light, he briefly loses himself in her happiness.

Small moments, very small moments are all he allows himself.

* * *

She comes upstairs now and tends to him.  This is a first, and he realizes just how long he has lived a life of solitude.  Slowly, he makes her time with him above ground easier, purchasing a labelling machine to mark kitchen items in braille and special sensors for the stove and sink. 

Occasionally, outside of the times where her mind is filled with chemicals, he touches her.  Usually it’s to guide her hand to a fresh towel or to a sprig of mint he’s brought in for tea.  Just the slightest of brush of contact to her warm, silky skin.

The cringe that comes before she moves away is never so slight.

Nor is the dull stab of pain he feels.


End file.
